


The Consequences

by lodessa



Series: Lorca/Cornwell Tumblr Prompts [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 01:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12570536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: For the first couple days(well she thinks it’s days but it is hard to say in a place like this) she’s held together by the irony.   Here she’s been trying to reign Gabriel in, get him to stop being so reckless, and that very thing is what is going to save her ass when he ignores all of the other admirals’ orders and comes for her.





	The Consequences

For the first couple days(well she thinks it’s days but it is hard to say in a place like this) she’s held together by the irony. Here she’s been trying to reign Gabriel in, get him to stop being so reckless, and that very thing is what is going to save her ass when he ignores all of the other admirals’ orders and comes for her.

It helps her through the initial torture, thinking about how later they will tease each other about it. 

Not that it makes a difference in her ultimate assessment, Gabriel is not okay. He’s used everything he picked up from years of her to fake the right responses on every psychological test for who knows how long. _How long did it take me to notice? Was it before the war?_

She doesn’t bother holding off screaming. It will only make them push harder for a reaction. Better to let them think they are winning.

Gabriel wouldn’t. She remembers that time they were captured back when they were still lieutenants and he was all bravado, making jokes for the sake of that poor ensign or maybe himself. He’s proud. He always has been.

She wonders what face he showed to that new security chief of his (always his pet spot) not so long ago when he was the one in a place like this. Did he remember how to wisecrack?

After a while, too long really, she tells herself that she’s probably misestimating how long it's been. Trauma will do that. She is well aware. Captivity distorts one’s perception of time.

The Klingons want her for something. She knows that. They aren’t just going to kill her, so she has time to wait, no matter how painful it may be: physically and mentally. All she has to do is straddle that line between giving them whatever it is they want and going too far in the other direction and making them think they are never going to get it from her.

She has to keep the promise alive, something that will be easier if she is certain what is they really want.

For the next few weeks (she thinks it is weeks) she focuses on that instead, on analyzing their actions and trying to ferret out their motivations.

She won’t think about Gabriel, about why he hasn’t come for her, about their final conversations.

She makes progress. She notices which guards seem the most bored, the Klingon officers whose interpersonal tension leave them steaming with resentment. She analyzes the questions they ask her and the questions they don’t. 

It is all intel. At first she tells herself it is something to help give herself more time. She tells herself it is information that could help the Federation’s understanding of the Klingons, help the war effort.

Ultimately, though, she has to admit that she’s indexing all this information looking for some weakness she can penetrate, some way to rescue herself.

He’s not coming.

Gabriel won’t break the rules this time, not for her, not when she threatened to take away his ship. She knows he saw it that way whatever her intentions. He won’t come for her for the very reasons she was right to worry. Gabriel is convinced he’s doing what is necessary but he’s lost sight of everything that really matters. He’s lost perspective.

He’d rather let her suffer, let the Klingons get what they want from her, let her die than risk her revealing the truth about him, so convinced he is that he knows best, that he’s the only one who can do what needs to be done.

He’ll tell himself it is a dispassionate choice, that he’s proving her wrong, that he is not out of control. 

Gabriel has always been so good at believing in his own bullshit. 

It is a huge part of what convinces other people to buy it. 

She’s always told herself she is different, that she sees him for who he is, that she understands him for better or worse.

Now, when that seems a hollow excuse, she needs to do better. She has to understand them: the Klingons. A mistake much smaller than the ones she made with Gabriel could be deadly here, more deadly.

So she has to be sure, has to be absolutely certain before she makes a move.

Fortunately, that’s always been a strong suit of hers, she reminds herself. She clings to that in the dark, through the pain. 

Every problem is also a solution. Every adversity is its own type of opportunity. She lists all the different variants through the broken bones and the bruises and the agony.

Growth requires discomfort, requires necessity.

In the end that’s what they want: transformation. It is painfully simple.

So she gives it to them.

She feeds them back every line they are waiting for, not at first of course that would be too obvious, but she slowly changes her responses, uses the bile and bitterness she tastes when she thinks of Gabriel. It’s an act, of course, but if he can lie to everyone… to her, she can make the Klingons believe.

They do, not at first but eventually they are convinced. 

The anger and betrayal are real and that’s the secret to convincing lies, coloring them with truth. How she feels when she thinks about Gabriel, when she is certain he isn’t falling into line but using that as an excuse… it gives her all the truth she needs to harness.

In the end she doesn’t have to escape. All she has to do is wait and they set up her escape for her. 

It is subtle enough given the source: the slight rotation in guards, the careless forgetting of some restraints. 

She’s sure they intend it to seem unintentional, but she’s well aware of how these people work and she can see an intentional weakness left out as well as the next person.

It’s a gamble, trusting that they want her to escape and not just to get caught trying to, but really… they could do anything to her already so they don’t need the pretext.

None of that matters, not as she feels the burn in her muscles as she runs, the searing pain of mis-set bones.

It doesn’t matter, not as she hurtles towards Federation space in a desperate rush, hoping the shuttle won’t run out of power before she gets into hailing range.

She comes to in familiar the bright light of a Starfleet medbay. It takes a moment for anything to really come into focus but when it does she is pretty sure she’s hallucinating.

She closes her eyes again. It can’t be him. There is no reason for Gabriel to be here by her bedside. She’s probably unconscious. Maybe life support has failed and she is dying from lack of oxygen. 

“Admiral. Admiral Cornwell can you hear me?” 

She opens her eyes again and it’s that medical officer from the Discovery… something with a C. She glances around into the background and there Gabriel stays fixed in her line of vision, sitting there like a permanent art installation.

“What happened?” Her throat feels raw and her voice sounds like it belongs to someone else.

“You managed to get a message transmitting, Kat,” Gabriel is suddenly closer, his hand covering hers and she wants to recoil but her body isn’t quite working her.

How dare her call her Kat? How dare he sit at her beside like he didn’t abandon her and hold her hand like he cares about her feelings?

How dare he act like he hadn’t hoped she would never escape., like he had not left her to rot or die.

“Life support was pretty low by the time we picked up and decoded your message, but there shouldn’t be any permanent damage,” the doctor offers.

“And you just so happened to be in range?” she doubts more than asks.

“Officially, yes,” Gabriel smiles at her like their are conspirators and she resents the assumed collaboration, “Unofficially… well that’s another story.”

It would be easier if she could believe him, but she knows better. She clings to her certainty in the face of a more appealing narrative.

“What’s the stardate?” she asks, and the answer confirms everything.

It has been nearly six months. There’s no way he was looking for her after all this time.

“Doctor Culber.” Her eyes are closed but there’s no way she’d ever mistake his voice. “If you’d give us the room for a moment.”

“Don’t...” she orders or begs him as he reaches out to caress the side of her face.

“Kat,” he leans closer anyway, “I’m so relieved.”

“Save it,” she tells him, “Don’t compound the injury by lying about it.”

“Fine,” he paces, “I intentionally didn’t go after you when you were captured. It seemed convenient, maybe even something more. But I regretted it, Kat. You have to believe me. We were out here because I changed my mind.”

There was a time when she would have wanted to believe him, but that version of herself had died in a Klingon holding cell.

“I hate that I can’t tell whether to trust you anymore,” she admits, “It doesn’t matter though, not really. Even if you had a change of heart you were selfish enough to let the Klingons get whatever they wanted from me rather than deal with my very valid concerns about your mental health.”

“I would have thought you’d be proud. After all, didn’t you tell me to stop playing cowboy?”

“That isn’t why you did it,” she swallows, “We both know it.”

“Don’t be like that,” he entreats, “If that’s true then it’s more clear than ever that I need help. I need your help.”

There was a time when that admission would have been the fulfillment of those unanswered prayers she never said out loud, even to herself. Now it just feels like a manipulation.

“You should go,” she tells him, “Before either of us say something you will regret.”

It doesn’t matter if he changed his mind. It doesn’t matter when. She knows the truth and she’s not the woman who left from this ship all those months ago. 

Before she was planning to let him off easy, to help him, to try to save his career as well as his life. Now. Now she knows better. Now she sees just how far he’s fallen and she knows just how far she might have to go.

She remembers, of course, what it was like. She knows there was a time when he was someone precious to her. Now, now there is nothing more precious than revenge. Alone in her biobed she feels the tears run down her face, for everything they have lost, for everything he threw away for the sake of his ego.

“Give it some time,” he entreats mere days later to her in the shuttlebay before she departs, “I can make this right. I’ve changed.”

Some things, she realizes, can’t be undone.

Maybe he’s changed, but so has she. Maybe that’s precisely the problem. It doesn’t matter how good the good times were; because, neither of them are the people who lived those.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the follow anonymous prompt: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Prompt for Cornwell/Lorca: "baby, now we've got bad blood (it's so sad to/ think about the good times/ you and I)"_
> 
>  
> 
> "Bad Blood" is good fic fodder, though this turned out a little less shippy than I originally intended.


End file.
